Can we have a Swedish error when patronymic does not match gender?

+13 votes
786 views
It would be very useful for Swedes to have an error search aiming at finding incompatibility between patronymic and gender. Before around 1850 (year is not precise of course) a daughter's last name would be [father's first name]+dotter and a son's last name would be [father's first name]+sson. I have already seen many daughters in wikitree being given the equivalent of a son's name. This is wrong and should be corrected. Is it too difficult to create a search mechamism? The patronymic can of course reside either in LNAB, Other last names or Middle name.
in The Tree House by Gunnar Fernqvist G2G6 (6.4k points)
retagged by Dorothy Barry
Shouldn't this also be tagged Sweden?

5 Answers

+5 votes

That could be done.

I.would check it for.all birth.or death.date before 1850. And Sveden or Sverige in.birth or deth location.

Why can patronim be in LNAB, Other last names or Middle name?

by Aleš Trtnik G2G6 Pilot (808k points)
I know but Ales communicated those names separately in the comments so could not click and my question is generally valid anyway. Many times I have a wikitreeID that I want to jump too. Surely there is a way?
Ah. When I want to do that I copy the ID in question (Lovell-457) and go to any profile page (my own will do) and replace the last part of the URL with what I have copied. Clumsy, but it gets me there.

I guess a search for IDs would be useful, but haven't seen one.
I do think the method chosen picks out the right (potential) errors.

And I don't "get" the thing about Lovell-457 and Brink-1173??

The question was if http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brink-1173 is in error, since he has no patronym. 

Usually people say, before 1850 patronym was used. My question is Allways? in that case Brink-1173 should have Ivarsson somewhere.

Ah. Glad you didn't choose that option for the report.

I don't think the answer is "always" - but I also suspect this is debatable. In any case, it's the patronymics with the wrong gender we are after. I'm looking at the males named -dotter right now. These will be wrong in all cases, as far as I understand.

There are of course many more females named -sson. These will need to be checked individually, I think - in case there are early instances of "frozen" patronymics.

Ok, so this error is done. If you think we should adjust the year, let me know. I can temporarily change it, so you can check the results.

As I was making this error, there are instances, where profile with patronym SomeNamesson and father's name wasn't SomeName. I can add another error for those profiles.

Thanks for the idea Eva.

I have been doing women with -sson ending and have only managed one so far because the research needed was extensive. I hate GEDCOM imports ... Had to adopt orphaned profiles to change the LNAB, but I guess that is OK.

Hah, yes. There should be a badge for We who hate GEDCOM.

For the -dotter cases when the LNAB needed to be changed, and I was able to do it, I used the hit-and-run method of adopting and then orphaning as soon as I was done.

Ales, tell us how to rerun this error check for 911 and 912 so we can check on progress next week.

Here is the starting point of the project.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Database_Errors

from there you have the link to latest error reports. and search for error 911.

this one is for this week

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Database_Errors_Project_2016-09-18

+5 votes
I'm amazed at how quickly Aleš was able to fix this.

I should put in some time correcting these errors. Already remediated Päder Gudmundsdotter, who was in duplicate, and now is Gudmundsson-135 . An easy case, because he was an orphan of the williams-anders GED breed. Actually had enough date and location info to be easily sourcable, to boot.

Some of the other -dotter errors are women labelled as males. I'll go fix a few of those before I make my coffee.
by Eva Ekeblad G2G6 Pilot (573k points)
Do you need False error for this two errors? Or is it definitely an error?
I think we need the false error at least for 912, the -sson.

I don't think any of us are sure where the cutoff point is, when patronymics started to be frozen into surnames. 1850 is a rough estimate, and good for now. It was a very gradual process.
There is no False Error for #912 yet.

I do think we need it - particularly for te period 1800-1850. For one thing, women born at that time may have taken/been assigned/used their husband's frozen patronymic as their married surname towards the end of this period.

@Eva

Maybe stupid question but how often did people use surnames 1800?

I heard from a neighbor that a girl started in school abt. 1920 and was asked for her surname and she didn't know so the school teacher "gave" her the surname Andersdotter (daughter of Anders)

My understanding is that before 1901 it was easy to change name then you just went to the priest and after 1901 it was formal...

I created Space:Swedish_names to write down what we understand about names....and  maybe use to extend the error function....

From http://wiki.genealogi.se/index.php/Patronymikon

1901 Namförordningen it was stated how you should do to change surname

1921 The wife had to use the husband's surname

1963 the law says you need to have a family name (not using the name of the house or patronymics)

1963 the women had the possibility to have both her "birth" surname and the surname after her husband

See also:

 

 

It will be added later today, when new dump will be processed.
Lovely!!!
@Magnus. Not a stupid question - but I don't have any statistics. The 1800s wer just a mess when it comes to names. Big social transition, big transition in naming practices. The story about the girl does not surprise me.

My grandfather, Gustaf Persson, was born in 1892, to Per Gustav Larsson. His sister, born in 1890 was Gustavsson before she married. So the powers that be looked at different parts of their father's name - for my granddads part he was surnamed when he did his military service in 1913. You know, children in the olden days did NOT have a last name at birth at all - they got it when they started to earn their own living.

@Eva little bit funny that inside WikiTree Name at birth is so important and then people we research didn't know what name they had....

"Tacka vet jag personnummer"

Yup. Och Tacka vet jag koordinater, when  it comes to locations.
LNAB was not a good choice, internationally - but it was chosen. Man får gilla läget, änna.
+3 votes
Aleš somewhere we did a list of Swedish counties. As not everyone add Sweden or Sverige in location I think that would find more profiles if we include the following county names

E.g.

Stockholms
Västerbottens
Norrbottens
Uppsala
Södermanlands
Östergötlands
Jönköpings
Kronobergs
Kalmar
Gotlands
Blekinge
Kristianstads
Malmöhus
Hallands
Göteborgs och Bohus
Göteborgs
Älvsborgs
Skaraborgs
Värmlands
Örebro
Västmanlands
Kopparbergs
Gävleborgs
Västernorrlands
Jämtlands
by Living Sälgö G2G6 Pilot (297k points)
How about categories? we did define Swedish categories, as I remember. Is it possible, that location is empty, but category is present?

As always Aleš you are right. 

I added checking for suggested Ians and it is 52350 profiles instead of 50787. And it gives a few more errors. I updated error lists.

Ok less than I thought..... one common pattern used is that you just add the parish people were born in e.g. Alfta (X)

where (X) is the county letter

Alfta (X) is in county Gästrikland and in Country Sweden

You can check on http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm group Search Item All wikitree and search for Alfta (X) or Alfta. You will see that almost all have Sweden also in name.

You can also check in group Analyse Item Location spelling for spelling variations. and go and correct them.

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebLocationSpelling/Spelling.htm?Location=sverige

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebLocationSpelling/Spelling.htm?Location=sweden

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebLocationSpelling/Spelling.htm?Location=Gastrikland

Thanks Aleš I will do some checking to understand how a Swedish location is stored inside WikiTree..... feels like today its a minor chaos with 

  • wrong characters
  • misspelling
  • misunderstanding about geography in Sweden
  • a lack of standard if country should be part of the location....

A standard way to describe a location inside Wikitree feels even more urgent....

Would be nice to have this utility inside WikiTree... cleaning by hand I feel is not an option when WikiTree gets bigger....or?

+3 votes
This is going to take its sweet little time, considering that so many of the corrections involve changing the LNAB of profiles with a manager.

I have suggested we keep track of the work at the Swedish Wikitree Facebook group.
by Eva Ekeblad G2G6 Pilot (573k points)

@Eva 

When I work with more complex things like example add coordinates to all graves at Norra Begravningsplatsen in Stockholm to Wikidata I use Google calc that is excellent when sharing etc.... and tracking what has been done

  • easy to share and work together
  • example

  

Yes. I have seen those in the Stockhaus group etc. I will see when I can muster the energy to do something new. As for now I have the batch I'm working with (error 912  1500-1699) in an OpenOffice spreadsheet. So it should probably be easy to upload. But I'm sort of sluggish when it comes to changing my habits. Not young anymore, you know.

@Eva Ok then maybe the easiest is that you travel down to Gunnar in Geneve.... then you can send handwritten notes to each other....

Someone did a crazy experiment printing Wikipedia maybe we should do the same with WikiTree so everyone feels less scared of the technology

https://vimeo.com/133172929

LoL!!

I did make a Google calc sheet soon after being goaded by Magnus. This rapidly evolved into a whole set of spreadsheets. Gunnar and I used those to coordinate our work and keep updated.

For a while after the introduction of the Status view I kept double account of what I did - but lately I have abandoned the calc sheet in favour of the Status view. Which is a pretty good tool - but I do keep less in touch with what Gunnar is doing. We're mostly working on different time periods, so not stepping on each others' heels.
+3 votes

Sound like an interesting session about how names has changed in Sweden. I am in Helsinki this week on SLUSH so I cant listen

Temakväll om Släktnamnsskickets utveckling
01 december 2016 18:00 - 20:00
Kungsklippan 6, 112 25 Stockholm, Sverige

Katharina Leibring från Namnarkivet i Uppsala kommer till stadsarkivet på Kungsklippan och berättar om släktnamnskickets utveckling i Sverige, om den nya namnlagen samt om Namnarkivets verksamhet, som bland annat innebär forskningsprojekt om kvinnonamn.

http://www.genealogi.se/kal/-1622

SSGF on FB
https://www.facebook.com/groups/113321398710997/?fref=nf

by Living Sälgö G2G6 Pilot (297k points)

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